


Six Months Out

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Incest, Incest, M/M, Past Abuse, Recovery, Sex Work, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:38:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And you thought it would get better. Six years old, and you're not sure how it could get worse.<br/>--<br/>Please read the tags. Strider bros. recovering from serious domestic abuse with the help of Egberts and Lalondes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been hard since you left that hellhole.

There were way too many of you in that house, crawling over each other like puppies looking for a bitch’s teat, and you wanted to get out. Your youngest brother, too, little baby Dave, he shouldn’t have been born into a life like that and he was so much younger than the rest and he needed you, looked up to you as the oldest to protect him.

Only six years old, and you’d regularly come home from your senior-year half-day of high school to find the old man passed out on the couch stinking of ten-dollar vodka and Dave passed out in his bed, glass shards all over the living room and welts all over your little bro’s skin. Only six years old, already affectionately nicknamed “Satan” and mocked as hellspawn by the harpy. Only six years old, and his flinch was visible every time you’d go to hug him, his eyes way too wide as he tracked your every movement and kept his back to the wall.

No wonder he took to blades so well. He found one of yours in the new shithole apartment you rented, a little butterfly knife, and you were gonna yell at him to stop messing with it, he’d put his eye out, before he flipped it over in his hand like a pro and gave a little gap-toothed grin. Well. Huh. Look at that, the little fuck-faced prodigy. It had made you smile, and so, once you got your next paycheck, you told yourself you’d buy him something like that. Not a real blade, he’d slice himself. A practice sword. Something real and big to hold, something to make him feel powerful.

Of course, paychecks were few and far between these days. Not like you weren’t trying to pay the bills, keep the electricity on, put food on the table, but whatever you thought you could make with your hands is turning into deformed neon pieces of plush-ass shit, and so you turned to the oldest profession to try to make your way.

Not the way you wanted to do things. It left you exhausted by the end of the day, feeling used and empty and soulless. On the job, you couldn’t think about why you were doing it or they’d call an hour break and you’d get chewed out by the guy behind the camera not to break a scene like that—it’s bad form to lose a boner because you’re thinking of your lil bro. You can’t tell him. You could never tell him. All you can hope is that he never, ever finds out the name they gave you.

Still, six months out and there’s nothing. Prospects dried up. The malformed bastards you sew together by hand aren’t selling. Your apartment’s full of the detritus of two kids trying to start a new life together—mismatched pieces of furniture, empty bags of Doritos littered on the cigarette-burned carpet, and Dave barely has a mattress to sleep on right now. You offered for him to take the futon, let you sleep on the piece of shit, but that look in his eye told you that he wasn’t accepting any pity.

You got desperate. You whored yourself out—more than before. That one time with that one guy in college has turned into skin and heat and sweat and grunts for eight hours a day. The plush rump you were born with ends up making your life fucking miserable, and you start running out of excuses to tell Dave as to why you hardly ever sit up any more.

Everything hurts. Every muscle in your body is sore and tense; anywhere with a nerve ending constantly feels like it’s prickling painfully. Every time you have to stop and think, every time you let your mind wander off, it goes to unpleasant places and twists you in terrible ways. And every time you look at Dave, your heart goes a little sideways in your chest, a weight sinking even further onto your shoulders.

You love him. So much. You want him to have a better life than this. Getting out was supposed to make things better, not worse. And now? Now you can hardly take care of yourself, let alone this little runt.

It’s little surprise that he starts getting into places he shouldn’t go.

He’s almost seven now, six months after you picked up and left, and he’s a clever little sonofabitch. Though you’ve tried to trick him by keeping your martial materials in unsuspecting places, he’s starting to find out your little hidey-holes and trigger your traps. He’s pretty good about hiding his discoveries from you, but not by much.

It’s Saturday. Twelve hours ago, some dude who made you call him Jorge was only following the sadistic director’s advice when he brutalized you for the entire afternoon and pushed you into overtime. You really need to get out of this business. Today, you’ve promised yourself you’ll get a caffeine IV going, research this whole Web site stuff, and maybe set up a little Internet business, since you can’t peddle these obnoxious little Smurf-things to anyone you know in person. Still, you’re irritable as fuck, wanting to lash out against the industry, against your coworkers, against the assholes who pit you against each other and don’t seem to care that you’re more than your dick—

Before you catch Dave playing with your baby.

That long, slim, wicked motherfucker of a blade is called Abel. He’s tasted blood—and he is his brother’s keeper. Because of that thing, you were able to keep the worst of the physical influences away from Dave, as long as you were around to intercept them in time. It was expensive as hell, cost you everything you earned for your first two years of high school, and goddamn was it worth the price you paid. The leather of the handle is perfectly fitted by now to the grooves of your hand; though the blade has a patina on it, it’s no less sharp, the edge still as razor-thin as it was on day one.

Dave has his hand wrapped around the handle, trying to make his child-sized fingers align with your grip. That’s fucking adorable. He’s such a strong kid. You’re just afraid he’s gonna hurt himself—and when he draws the blade from its sheath, for a second you’re convinced that he’s sliced open his arm and you’ll have a very awkward trip to the ER that you won’t be able to pay for. But no, those are old scabs on the insides of his forearms; the blade gleams in the Houston morning, and Dave looks at it with his little mouth hanging open with wonder.

It’s when he starts doing practice slashes with it, leaping around his room trying to jump and hack at things, that you have to interrupt. “Dave, what the hell do you think you’re doing.”

Dave freezes with his back to you, practically in midair. His shoulders hunch up, his arms tense, and when he lands, it’s on silent feet. You don’t like the way the silence has settled thick in the room. More than that, you don’t like what it’s done to him. Usually you don’t have to dad him around this much, but you’re not about to just let this slide. That thing is yours, dammit, and he needs to respect that. “I’m sorry,” comes out of his mouth in tiny, whimpered words.

“Put it down.” Oh, fuck, there’s that parental thing again, you don’t like doing this but you have to.

When he moves to set the sword down, he reaches for the nearest surface—the little table propped up by a stack of VHS tapes that you have him use as a desk. That instrument of death is now nestled up against spelling papers and addition tables. Dave turns to face you, hands shaking, and his eyes are wider than you’ve ever seen them before. “I’m sorry,” he says again, a little-kid lisp between missing teeth.

He’s scared to death, the poor little shit. “C’mere.” You wanna give him a hug, tell him it’s okay and that you just don’t want him to hurt himself.

“I’m sorry,” Dave repeats. It’s like a mantra with him now. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He steps closer to you, pulls you by your belt loops out of his doorway and into the room. “I’m sorry…”

This is happening to somebody else. Not you. This can’t be happening to you. Your little brother, the not-yet-seven-year-old, is wheeling you around so you sit on his mattress with a whump and a whine. He looks for a minute like he’s going to sit in your lap and crawl into your arms and ask you to hold him, but you know him, he doesn’t like that much physical contact, so what the fuck is going on? He drops to his knees in front of you, reaches up to hug you around the waist—briefly, so briefly, like losing a sweatshirt you tied around your middle—and then—

Dave’s eyes are wide, glossy, and utterly blank as he undoes the button at the front of your jeans.

Your chafed genitals are trying to retract into your chest cavity. This is bad. This is really, really bad. This is nauseatingly horrifying. Your little brother is between your knees and trying to get into your pants and his mouth is hanging open and you can see where he’s missing his baby teeth and his breath smells like Cheerios and sour milk and his tiny child hands are fumbling with your zipper and you are absolutely frozen in place with absolutely no idea what to do before it comes out of you with the force of a thousand ‘no’s: “Stop!”

Dave’s reaction is immediate, paralyzed in place even as he was trying to peel away your fly to reveal your boxers. Now that you’ve said that, you can see tears gathering in his eyes, his lower lip wibbling a little. “I’m sorry.” It’s like he doesn’t know any other words.

“What the fuck are you doing?” You sound a little more alarmed than you’d planned. First of all, your body hates you right now. On top of that, your mind is trying to make you projectile vomit. This is wrong. This is very wrong. This is a fucking Dateline special, why-don’t-you-take-a-seat-Mr.-Strider, last known photographs and smiling images of children while a narrative of innocence lost plays over a haunting piano refrain.

And meanwhile, little Dave is just sitting back on his heels, sniffling a little, wet tracks going through the freckles on his cheeks. “I thought…” He trails off. He can’t meet your eyes. “I could tug it,” he mumbles. “I could sit on your lap.”

Tug your dick. Sit on your dick. Oh my fucking jesus christ what is happening here. “No—Dave, no, what the fuck, no—no!” There are not enough ‘no’s and none of them will ever be loud enough. Who the fuck is this little shit and what did they do with your kid brother.

Dave really starts crying now, little hiccupped child-sobs as his hands curl into little fists at your knees. “I don’t want the belt,” he cries out. “Or the bottle. It hurts.”

Now that his hands are off some areas you really wish didn’t exist right now, you zip up and look down at him. He thinks you’re going to whip him. Beat him until glass shatters over his skin. “Dave,” you whisper, more to yourself than the pitiful child in front of you. “What the fuck did he do to you?”


	2. Chapter 2

You need an adult.

You are the adult.

You don’t feel comfortable comforting Dave. Not when he’s like this, crying at your feet and unwilling to touch unless he is the toucher. “I’m just gonna—I’m gonna be in the kitchen, okay, lil man?” After you pause and take a breath and assess the situation, you can—

Do what, exactly?

The next thing you know, you’re whirled around the apartment, almost by a will not your own. Your patellas protest when you slam down on your knees in the bathroom, and the rim of the toilet is hugging the shells of your ears as you worship the porcelain god. The first heave isn’t so bad, because it’s not like you didn’t have dinner. It’s the heavy breathing afterwards when you realize you just threw up, the second vom purging your system with nothing but gorge behind it, that leaves you feeling like you swallowed bleach. The taste of coffee acid and bile is stuck at the back of your throat, no matter how many times you flush or spit. You just hope to God your brother didn’t hear you do that, didn’t make the connotation that what he did disgusted you this much and kicked you to such a visceral reaction.

You grip the sink, stare hard at yourself in between trying to take sips of water. You’re nineteen. Your brother’s gonna be seven next month. What the fuck do you do about this? Do you ask him the questions, or do you let someone else, someone like a professional? Fuck, will CPS track you down and realize why you left and say you’re not a fit legal guardian for a kid this fucked up? That’s the last thing you want for Dave, to be separated from you. Who can you tell? Who can he tell?

But you have to be there for him right now, and gazing at your navel ain’t gonna do shit. Once you’re a little more composed, you get in the kitchen, start heating some water in a saucepan and getting a cracked mug that has a faded imprint of the Alamo wearing off the porcelain, and start rummaging around for the Lipton you always keep on hand in case Dave’s got the sniffles.

Dave’s already sitting at the folding card table you serve dinner at, kicking his feet that don’t quite touch the floor as he wiggles in his folding chair. Still, his head is resting on his forearms, and he isn’t looking at you. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles at you from under his baggy sleeves.

“Wouldja stop sayin’ that?” You dip your finger in the water—just warm enough—and fill the mug, waiting for it to seep while you look for something to sweeten it with. Meanwhile, the smell of your coffee is nauseating you again; you pour whatever’s left in the carafe down the sink. Maybe you’ll make yourself some tea, too. This is just fucking sick all around and you shouldn’t have to deal with it but you’re trying to be responsible and you love Dave and you want him to be okay and this is very not okay. “You’re not in trouble or anythin’, I just wanna talk.”

“I’m not in trouble?” Dave’s head rises, to the extent where you can now see his red eyes peering at you from the shade under his white-blond bangs, but he’s still hiding the rest of his face from you. Protecting himself, you suppose, as best he knows how. He sounds so surprised, God bless him.

“You’re not in trouble,” you repeat. Honey. Here. Good. The tea’s weak and only somewhat warm, but sweet like the South, and you leave the mug in front of Dave as you sit across the table from him. No. Not this seat. This one isn’t right. Feels like you’re interrogating him or something. No, you just wanna figure some shit out, learn what exactly you’re dealing with here. Instead, you shift to the seat next to him.

Dave timidly puts his hands out, wraps his little fingers around the mug, and pulls it closer to him, hunching around it. “’M not sick,” he mumbles, but he puts his face down near the tea anyway, huffing in the aroma.

Oh fucking Christ he doesn’t think there was anything wrong with that. He doesn’t understand how fucked up this is. He thinks what he just did was normal. “No. No, you’re not sick,” you reassure him. If he wouldn’t worm away from you, you’d reach down and ruffle his hair, but you have a feeling that any contact with him is gonna get him to jump across the room. What he just did? Yeah, that was sick. But he’s just a kid. He doesn’t understand.

You really don’t want to be the one to break it to him. When he takes a sip like that, makes that little face, you’re reminded of just how young he really is. Fuck, when you were seven you were playing tag with the neighbor kids and building tree forts and learning how to write your name in cursive, not trying to start your life over. “Why’d you yell at me?” Dave asks you softly.

“I didn’t—I didn’t yell at you,” you stutter out. Did you yell? You can’t remember. “I was just a little freaked.” If you did yell, you didn’t mean to. “You had one of my swords, lil guy.” Yes, because that’s what you wanted to focus on. The sword. Not the fact that this just got incredibly beyond your reckoning. “I thought you were gonna put your eye out. Hurt yourself, or something else. That’s some dangerous shit.” You shouldn’t be cursing around a six-year-old. Fuck it. He’s your brother.

“You’re not mad at me?” He sounds so pathetic, but maybe that’s because he muttered it into his mug. He tips it up, takes a sip. What an adorable little shit. Who would wanna hurt him so bad?

Are you mad at him? At all? “Not really,” you say, and shrug. “You know it’s my shit, you shouldn’t be touching it. Can’t wait to get one of your own, huh?” Your smile is forced, but you’re trying to let him know that it’s okay, that he can talk to you.

Dave might smile back, but it’s hidden in his tea. “It’s just so cool!”

“Yeah, but you gotta be really, really careful. There’s a reason I hide my shit from you—don’t want you to get hurt.” Don’t want anyone else to hurt him. Don’t want him to hurt himself. “So no more messing with the swords until you got one of your own, a’ight?”

“Okay.” It’s grumbled in that mocking tone that kids always give to adults, and Dave rolls his eyes at you, but it makes you smile. That’s your kid. That’s your bro.

So. Uh. That part of the conversation is pretty much over. Hopefully you’ve established that no, you’re not mad ad Dave, just disgusted at something else. How in the fuck are you supposed to talk about what you need to talk about? “Why’d you freak out on me, lil man?”

“I thought you were mad at me.” He’s mumbling so bad you can barely hear him, but the kitchen is deathly silent. The words hang in the air for long enough so you can catch them. “Dad used to get real mad, and he’d—do things.”

That last part was visibly erased and written over. Dave’s clamming up on you. You gotta give back in this conversation, show Dave that it’s okay to talk about things. “I used to get home from school and I’d find you all cut up,” you tell him. “Was that Dad?”

“Yeah, he’d—“ Dave stops clutching the mug quite so hard, but his hands come up to clamp over his mouth instead.

“Hey.” You lean a little closer, but still don’t make a move to touch him. He’s fragile. He’ll break if you lay a single finger on him, shatter into all the pieces he’s trying so hard to hold together right now. “It’s me. He ain’t even here, he don’t gotta know.” Your accent starts coming out and makes you want to gag all over again.

“He,” and this time Dave looks a little more ready to talk. Still, his eyes are down on the table, and he’s idly chewing at the rim of his mug, taking little sips every now and then. “He was all slurry. He was real, real mad. Like real mad. He threw things at me, sometimes.” Another sip.  You don’t want to interrupt him now unless you have a really good reason. “Tell me I was bad and hit me with his bottle.”

“Jesus,” you whisper under your breath. He makes it sound normal. That is not good. At all. “How old were you?”

“I’unno.” Dave shrugs. Did he pick up that motion from you? “Three, maybe. I was the only one home.”

Your stomach knots. If you’d been there, you coulda stopped this all from happening in the first place. You shoulda been there. But this isn’t about your self-flagellation. This is about Dave. “Yeah, three.” The math makes sense, because that’s when Bobbi Sue started going to school. Still, it’s disturbing as fuck. “He ever chase you around? Used to do that to me.” Lies, but you have to keep him talking.

“Yeah.” Dave only gets more and more sullen as you pry him open. Hell, if you were him, you wouldn’t wanna talk about this shit, either. “He ran around yelling and I hid because I was scared. He always found me, though. And he pulled my pants down and made me lean over the chair and hit me with his belt.” The chair. He doesn’t even have to tell you which one, it’s so clear in your memory: that ratty maroon piece of shit, stinking of alcohol and cigarette butts, low enough that a kid could get his hips up against the arm of it and hide his face in the seat with his arms over his head as the old man whupped the tar outta him.

He did that to you once. Just once, before Dave was even born. You were ten, tried to run away from home, and once Officer Pete dropped you off back home the old man just took off his belt and you had nowhere to run and he didn’t even make you count them, just struck and struck and struck until you were crying and your backside was black and blue. Was he that vicious with Dave, too? “How many times?”

Dave shrugs again. You don’t like that nonchalance from him right now. “A lot.”

Oh, shit. Your stomach flops dangerously again, but you don’t dare get up and get a drink of water—not now, when Dave’s actually talking to you about things you need to hear from him. Not all the things, either, and you have no idea how to ask about the things you need to know without making him shut down completely. “Why’d you… do that, when you thought I was mad?” The way it comes out of your mouth sounds casual, free and easy. It’s nothing of the sort, the thought making you want to throw up again.

“He didn’t just hit me.” You gathered that much. Dave’s staring across the room now, his eyes somewhere far-off where things don’t hurt. “He got mad and made me make food.” So drunk he relied on a three-year-old to make him meals? Jesus fucking Christ. “He never liked it so he got mad. I never got to eat because I didn’t do good. But he told me he had something for me and to open my mouth. And once I did good I got to eat.”

At this rate, you’re never going to eat again. That it happened is enough for right now. You really, really do not want to know how many times. “How old were you?”

“Four.” His answer is a lot more definitive this time.

You don’t like that finality. You don’t like how exactly he knows these things. Fuck, you can’t remember any concrete details until you were about Dave’s age and started school. That he has such vivid memories of such fucking terrible things can’t be good for him. “What… ended up in your mouth?”

“I don’t know. I closed my eyes every time.” Implying it was more than once. More than just a few times. He closes his eyes now and shivers a little. “At first it just tasted really bad. Then he put it in there too.”

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. That’s the same ‘it’ from those other phrases. You didn’t get Dave out fast enough. It’s your fault. It’s your fucking fault. It’s entirely your goddamn fucking fault that this pathetic kid is dribbling out his life story like this to you. An immense weight of guilt settles in the pit of your stomach and makes you hunch your shoulders just like Dave’s doing. “But he let you eat?” You don’t know what to do about what you’re learning, but you can’t help him if you don’t know.

“Sometimes it wasn’t at lunch,” Dave whispers. “Sometimes he woke me up in the mornings. But in the mornings he wasn’t all mad.” He folds his arms, puts his head down on the table in their protective circle. His voice gets even more fuzzy and indistinct; you get the feeling he wants to evaporate or sink through the floor. “My hands got so much white stuff on them.”

No you did not need that mental image and even though you thought you’d had the gag reflex fucked out of your throat it is very much alive and well as you try to upchuck everything you’ve ever eaten in your entire life. You choke down your bile and try not to make your shudder so visible. “Was he ever not mad?” you wonder. Sure, he was a rage-filled guy, your old man, but he never got this bad—or did he? He got worse as you got older, but not this bad.

“Sometimes.” You didn’t mean it as an actual question, saints above, but Dave’s answering it all the same. “Sometimes he let me sit on his lap. We watched TV and he—“

You don’t want to force Dave to talk, but you in particular need to know how bad this was. If—you don’t want to think about it, but you will burn that fucking house down with the bastard’s own alcohol fueling the flames and the fucker trapped inside and screaming. “He?”

“He said things. Like how bad I was. Bad on the inside.” Dave’s shaking so bad that it’s rattling the entire table, making it scrape on the linoleum floor. “He said he had to make me good. He wasn’t mad but he was mean—it hurt, it hurt really bad, but he didn’t stop, he—“

Those are sobs. That’s your little brother’s entire body wracked with weeping. “It’s okay,” you try to soothe him, even though that’s as far from the truth as it’s possible to get. “You don’t have to say any more.” Mostly because you don’t want, or need, to hear it. It’s enough for you to know ‘inside’ and ‘hurt.’ You have never before known what it felt like to have a homicidal rage sweep over you, but you’re shaking just as badly as Dave, trying to hold back the righteous anger that makes you want to obliterate the man who did this to him. Before your throat closes up, before you lose control, you bring yourself back, force yourself to talk. “How old were you then?”

“Same’s I am now.” His voice is as small as you’ve ever heard it.

Six years old. You’re not sure it could get any worse than this. Penetration. Of a six-year-old. Fuck, you’re a man grown and your body’s nearly trained to do it and you still don’t like it. Still hurts. Not just physically. An invasion, dread settling in your gut and degradation clouding your mind. And you voluntarily signed up for this shit. Dave, though…

All you want to do is gather him in your arms, hold him and tell him you’re never gonna hurt him, let him cry on your shirt and snot on your sleeves. But when you reach out to reassure him by caressing his arm, he twitches away from you. Instinct. “Don’t.”

You sigh heavily, sitting back instead. He’s tiny, for almost seven. You don’t remember being that short or that skinny. Is he not getting enough food? Are you fucking up already? “Whaddaya need, lil guy?” Not physical comfort, apparently.

“Lea’ me ‘lone.” He shrinks further into himself. His shirtsleeves are now covering his hands.

He doesn’t want you here. He never wanted to tell you. As much as you want to be here for him, right now, he’s told you what he wants, and by God, you’re going to respect that. Dave’s taken too much shit from people who never let him voice an opinion or say what he needed, and you’re not gonna add yourself to that list. Still, there has to be something you can do. “Wanna play the NES?”

He stops shaking quite so hard at that. “Maybe.”

Better than ‘no.’ “All right, lil man. You just—stay in here, I’ll be back in your room.” It’s the only sideroom in your shitty apartment, and you want to give Dave a little space and privacy right now. You don’t know if the Ethernet cord is long enough, but you’ll make do. “If you need anything, just holler, ‘kay?”

Dave doesn’t make a sound. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t acknowledge that you said anything. Too wrapped up in his own head. Not good. Did you do the right thing? Was it you who had to ask those questions?

You end up in Dave’s bedroom, tidying the mess of papers on his desk after you put Abel away and hide him in a safe place. As it turns out, you can barely get the Internet back here, but you said you’d stay out of Dave’s way, and today, that means making him food and not much more. Even though you intended to use today for something completely different, you end up browsing through Web pages trying to do your research on what you’re dealing with.

You’re tired, so tired, dealing with things you don’t want to know, and as Dave elicits beeps and bloops from the television, you’re trying to figure out where to go from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL RIGHT FUCKERS ARE YOU READY FOR THIRTEEN MORE CHAPTERS OF THE STRIDER BROS OVERCOMING DOMESTIC ABUSE WITH THE HELP OF EGBERTS AND LALONDES
> 
> DIS GON B GUD


	3. Chapter 3

You call in sick on Monday. Your agent isn’t especially surprised—apparently he heard about Jorge, just like everybody else at the studio, and so he snickers at you even before the phrase “I’m not coming” is out of your mouth. Disgusting perverts.

If anyone should be calling in sick, it’s Dave. He’s been moping all weekend, hardly tearing himself away from the television. You were afraid to give him paper and crayons, because you didn’t want to have to look at his art—just in case there’s something buried too deep for words he can only tell you this way.

Fuck, you’re gonna be the one needing therapy at this point.

You pull on some real-person clothes, but when you look in the mirror, that’s not quite you who’s staring back. White polo—too preppy, you were always more grunge, but the plaid shirts ain’t gonna be winning anybody over today. The closest you could come to formal pants were black skinny jeans. You’re just gonna have to make do for now. Black snakeskin boots, beat-up leather jacket from the best bins at the Salvation Army, and you feel strange without stuffing your messy hair under a baseball cap but that ain’t gonna make a good first impression.

It’s as good as it’s gonna get, though. “Ready to go, lil man?” you holler.

Dave’s behind you almost as fast as you can blink. Did he learn that from you, or did he have to teach that to himself out of necessity? Doesn’t really matter. He’s wearing his favorite shirt, one that you grew out of, with a pixelated record print on the front worn in by loving use and long red sleeves that still fall over his hands. “Duh,” he says sullenly, looking at you like you’re stupid from under his fringe.

Kid needs a haircut. You almost reach down to tousle his hair, then think better of it. Instead, you busy your hands with pulling on motorcycle gloves. “I’m takin’ you to school today, kiddo.” Usually you just walk him to the bus stop so you can make it into work at a reasonable hour, but there’s (barely) room for two on your shitty motorbike, and there’s people you need to talk to.

You’re not sure Dave means to, but he smiles up at you a little bit. Still, his voice is trying to betray how awesome he thinks you are for letting him ride with you on your crotch rocket. “Cool.” It’s so deadpan that it’s adorable.

You can sit forward in the seat—you don’t want to spoon up against Dave, would rather have him clinging onto you like he’s Yoda and you’re a whiny, punk-ass Luke Skywalker. And cling he does, squeaking a little as you accelerate and take corners. Doesn’t take too long to get to his school, though. When he climbs off the back of the bike, he starts running up the steps right away. Running away from you? Towards something that will take his mind off things? What do you say to his little retreating form? “Be safe,” comes out of your mouth stupidly. Soccer momming.

“Whatever,” Dave calls back to you. He gives you a wave, but doesn’t look back.

Good. This way, he won’t see you come in behind him. There’s a veritable wave of pint-sized brats pushing past you to make their way to their classrooms, but you’re headed in a different direction. The principal’s office in this piece-of-shit prison isn’t easy to find, but it’s significantly more welcoming than the linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting of the hallways. There’s one girl behind the front desk angrily smacking her gum, and the sound is so fucking irritating you want to fistfuck her throat open. “Do you have an appointment?” she asks lazily, barely deigning to look up.

She can’t be any older than you are, you realize. She’s, what, barely out of high school and already working? What the fuck is wrong with her? You fail to appreciate the hypocrisy. When you walk up to the desk, you realize you don’t quite know what you came here to say or what to do with your hands while you say it. “Hi. Yes. Hello. Um.” You swallow, try again. “Hi. I kinda need to see someone.”

“You need to have an appointment,” she says. She continues to smack her gum, looking over the tops of her rounded glasses to peer at you as if she’s utterly annoyed with your very presence.

Good. The feeling’s mutual. “Listen, Miss, uh…” What does the nameplate on her desk say? “Crocker,” you fumble. Dumbass name. “My kid is having a serious problem and I gotta talk to the principal about it.” For winging this entire exchange, you might not actually be fucking it up that badly.

The girl just rolls her eyes and shoves a clipboard in your direction. “Sign the form, I’ll phone him.” You breathe an imperceptible sigh of relief. Strife Round One passed. Once you scrawl B Strider on the sign-in slip, though, you have to listen to her annoying voice drawl on the phone. “Mister Egbert? Yeah, there’s a Mister, uh…” She squints at your handwriting. “Stride to see you.”

“Strider,” you correct her.

She flaps her hand at you to shut up while she finishes talking with her boss. “A few minutes. Great.” When she sets the receiver down, the smile she gives you is obviously fake. “Have a seat. Principal Egbert will be with you shortly.”

You can already tell this was a stupid idea. This guy isn’t gonna listen to you. You look like a kid. You act like a kid. And yet you’re trying to take care of a kid. But you literally do not know who else to go to. Everyone else was people you knew from home, and you are not going back. Never going back. Never looking back. Never thinking back—

With your head in your hands, you rub the heels of your hands into the sockets of your eyes. You’re exhausted, not just mentally but physically. The day off is probably doing your body good, but you know it’ll just get wrecked again tomorrow. In the last six months, your muscles have reorganized and corded differently under your skin; you’re wiry, lithe, strong, stronger than you look, but inside? You’re bird-boned and fragile. Already broken. A fuck-up.

You don’t have a firm grasp on time. It could be five minutes or five hours or five seconds that you sit in that little waiting room listening to the shitty elevator music and literally pulling your hair out in your agitation. You’re starting to feel a little more sympathetic to Miss Crocker—if this is what she has to listen to all day, no wonder she comes across as a soulless robot. Maybe your brain is trying to cave in on you, because you feel like there’s nothing but mush between your ears.

A middle-aged dude walks out from the back of the office and leans over the desk to talk to the secretary. He’s formally dressed: gray suit, black tie, brimmed hat. Dapper as fuck. This was the wrong thing to wear if this is what you were dealing with. When he turns to look at you, you can see piercing blue eyes from behind thin, squared glasses frames. There’s a permanent worry line between his eyebrows; his salt-and-pepper hair is impeccably slicked. Why do you suddenly feel like you were the one sent to the principal’s office and in trouble?

The principal may look stern, but his voice is deep and warm when he greets you. “Mister Strider,” he announces, coming to stand in front of you and offer his hand to shake.

You willingly squeeze, pump once, twice, let go. (Just like you learned from people you want to forget.) The way he addresses you leaves a bad taste in the back of your mouth. “Mister Strider was my father,” you say coldly. “Call me—“ Call you what? Not your usual nickname, it sounds utterly childish and that is not what you want to convey here. “Derick.” Yeah, that’ll work. The other half of your name. Put them together and it’s like you’re a whole person.

“Derick,” he repeats. “Then call me Robert. No need to stand on formalities.” And yet he follows this up with, “Please, follow me.”

His office is considerably more genial than the rest of the building—blue walls instead of white, a few framed pictures on his desk. A handsome mahogany clock on the wall ticks. And ticks. And ticks. Principal Egbert—Robert—sits behind his desk, wheels his executive chair to the surface. Facing him are two empty chairs. “I, uh.” What now?

“Have a seat,” Robert offers. “Would you like anything to drink? Water? Coke?”

“I’m fine.” You’re not fine, but you don’t need anything to drink. “Can I close the door?” The last thing you want is people overhearing this shit, and once it starts spilling out of your own mouth, you have no idea how you’ll react.

“Of course.” The door handle is cool in your grasp, the door itself heavy and solid. Once it clicks, there’s nothing but just you and this stranger. “So. Derick Strider. Are you, by chance, Dave’s father?”

No. No no no no no. First of all, fuck that. You’re not a single dad. Second of all, fuck that shit. You’re only nineteen, and Dave is almost seven—you woulda been twelve. Third of all, fuck that shit so hard. The entire reason you left was to get away from the concept of fatherhood and dads and your old man. “Something like that,” comes tersely out of your mouth.

“Please, sit,” he reminds you. “I must say, you are younger than I expected. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.” You know he doesn’t believe you. It doesn’t matter. You finally take a seat, gripping the arms of the chair hard; your knuckles feel like they’re going to burst through your gloves. “Listen, I don’t exactly know how to talk about this,” starts spilling out of your mouth.

“I was going to call, you know,” he mentions off-handedly. He turns away from you, and you feel slightly less judged and scrutinized for not being good enough. Instead, he starts messing on his computer, bringing up student profiles. “Dave has been acting out recently, and I was hoping to have some sort of input from you on how to handle his erratic behavior.”

“Shh—“ starts coming out under your breath before you remember to silence the cuss in front of this guy. Oh, shit, Dave’s already started fucking up at school because of this. Too late, singsongs in your head. Too late. Too fucking late. “I didn’t know,” you say defensively.

“Usually, when we see this out of children, it’s because of the home environment.” And now he’s turning back to you, cradling his elbow in his one hand, holding his other fist in front of his mouth as he thinks and speaks. “Any changes in how he’s acted outside of school?”

“Actually. Uh.” You have to force yourself to stop gripping the chair; instead, your hands come together so you can compulsively crack your knuckles. It’s a disgusting habit, but you really don’t know what to do with your hands. You’re nervous as fuck. “Listen, I didn’t know if you were the right person to talk to, but I had to tell somebody, and I was like, hell, let’s start at the top, with someone responsible and sh—stuff,” you’re rambling and yet you can’t cram the words back into your mouth, “I just don’t know what to do but someone else has to know, someone who can do something about it.”

“Derick.” Robert’s voice is soothing, cutting across your babble. “If it’s about Dave’s well-being, we at the school need to know.”

“Right. About Dave. That.” You take one breath, then another. A short little not-laugh catches in your throat. “No one’s gonna believe this. I don’t know why I’m here.”

The other man is either being incredibly patient with you or actually cares what happens to Dave. “I understand that things like this are difficult to talk about,” he reassures you. “This conversation will be held confidential, unless there is something I am required by law to pass on to authorities.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” you mumble. You run your hands through your hair, frustrated. Why won’t the words just come out?

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Robert suggests.

Who the fuck does he think he is, somebody with a legal pad and a pen while you recline on a leather couch and tell him about your dreams in which you’re crying in the corner eating a banana while your father beats you half to death? You choke down your resentment at his upper-crust grit—he has no idea what it’s like to live like this, no one should know what it’s like to live like this because no one should have to, and you have to understand that other places and families and people are actually normal. “The beginning,” you repeat him. “Well, uh. I think you noticed that Dave was new this year.”

“Yes, his enrollment was a bit of a surprise.”

“That’s ‘cause, uh. He and I just escaped by the skin of our—teeth,” you fudge it over, “out of a bad home sitch. And when I say bad, I mean really bad. Poor as—dirt,” you fudge again, “siblings out the—rear,” you hate editing yourself in front of this guy, “one parent barefoot and pregnant and the other a slobbering drunk.”

“If you feel more comfortable not editing your language, then by all means,” Robert offers.

His concession comes as a relief; you sigh, and an ounce of weight rolls off the ten tons slouching down your shoulders. “I think you get the picture,” you say. “Things were shit. I got Dave out. We picked up in the middle of the night and drove seven hours and landed here and I got into a leasing office and got us a piece of shit apartment and we started starting over.” You leave out the part about your jobs. “I mean, don’t get me hard, it’s been rough, but I’m still, like—I’m puttin’ food on the table for me ‘n’ him,” the longer you talk the more your twang comes out and you hate it hate it hate it, “payin’ the bills and keepin’ the ‘lectricity on.”

“Are you having problems making ends meet?”

“No!” What, did he think you were in here for a fucking handout? “No, I got that covered. I know how to live frugal. Grew up like it,” you remind him. “This is—listen. This is gonna be really hard for me to talk about and I gotta know that you’re not gonna sic CPS on my ass just from hearing this, because I just want to help the lil squirt and you were the only person I could think to talk to.”

“Your current living situation, while not ideal, sounds loving and dedicated,” Robert says. “I’m a single father myself.” You trace his eyes to the photographs littering his desk. A constant feature is a young kid who looks just like the man in front of you: blue eyes, shaggy black hair, glasses, but with buck teeth. In one picture Robert has the boy on his shoulders; in another, he’s teaching the kid to ride a bike. The last is his son’s grade school picture. “He’s in Dave’s class, in fact.”

Weird. Whatever. You shake your head from side to side to shake your thoughts back in order, tugging at your hair briefly to make yourself concentrate. This isn’t about classmates or anything, this is about Saturday. “I just. You gotta understand, this literally made me physically ill when I heard this from Dave. It ain’t pleasant.”

“Parent visits to my office rarely are.”

Humor? When you look up at him, his mouth barely betrays a smile, but enough for you to know that he’s capable of cracking a joke and using sarcasm. Once again, this guy knows exactly how to speak your language. “Saturday,” you start with. “You know how kids are, they get into shit they’re not supposed to, you have to tell ‘em to put it down or else, y’know, discipline ‘em and shit. And Dave just does this—I never seen him this worked up, he looked like he was about to cry, and he—“

You swallow. This is turning out to be even more difficult than you imagined at first, and what you were imagining is being stuck in a booth with a thousand porcupines and trying very hard not to bleed to death. “He whirled me around and sat me down and he got between my knees and he started undoing my pants,” comes out of you in a rush. “And I didn’t know where he learned that reaction to criticism but it sure as fuck wasn’t from me. So I told him to stop and he got even more upset, and he says—he says,” you’re not sure you can repeat it with those piercing baby-blues on you trying to rip you apart and see inside you, “he could tug it or sit on my lap instead. And meanwhile I’m trying not to projectile vomit because, y’know, what do you do when there’s a six year old you’re related to trying to do that?”

“I see.” He’s back into Principal Egbert mode.

“No, you don’t,” you cut across him. He doesn’t see jack shit. “You got no fuckin’ clue.” Your hands slap down on the desk, but even with that kind of force, they’re trembling like mad. “’Cause, y’know, I did the responsible thing, sat the kid down and told him not to do what I originally meant to cuss him out for, and then I’m like, shit, I gotta ask, I gotta know what I’m dealing with here. And I mean, my old man, he knocked me around, but not—not like this, nothing like this, Dave said he was belted and he’d get bottles broken over his skin and—“

The warm weight of one of Robert’s hands sinks over yours, as cousins might while trying to work through a profound grief. “I understand this is difficult to talk about.”

You shake it off, taking your hand back like him touching you scalded you. “I’m not fuckin’ done, lemme finish.” You breathe heavy through your nose, try to put everything in order again. “There was—touching. The old man fuckin’—“ How do you talk about this without vomiting? Clinical words. “Forced fellatio. Asked for—for Dave to—stimulate his—“ You find yourself making a crude jacking-off motion. Classy, Strider. It’s to keep yourself from shutting down entirely. Theatre of the absurd. “There was—everything,” you finish with lamely.

“Including penetration?”

“How can you just fuckin’ say it like that?” is your knee-jerk response. Okay, so you’re agitated. Big fucking deal. “Yes. Yes, there was ‘penetration.’ Everything means fuckin’ everything.” Principal Egbert sits back in his chair. He must be a pipe smoker; there’s no other reason for that habit of holding his fist up near his face like that unless he smokes, and the way his fingers clench, it’s like he’s trying to recall a manual fixation while he thinks. “If you gotta smoke,” you offer. It’s the closest you’ll come to apologizing for your short temper, your outburst.

Robert doesn’t say anything at first, merely reaches over and opens a side drawer. Of course, just like you expected. He cradles the butt of the pipe in his fist, holding the mouthpiece between his teeth while he stares off into space. You half feel like Doctor Watson and fucking Sherlock Holmes up in this bitch, trying to figure out the mystery of what to do now that it’s out in the open that Dave Strider’s been—molested. Abused.

“I shouldn’t’a said anything,” you realize, taking your hands back from the edge of the desk and instead putting your elbows on your knees so you can put your face in your palms again. “Shoulda started callin’ psych departments and shit. Hello, yes, paging Doctor Freud, come in Doctor Freud—“

“Derick.” This man has the remarkable ability to make you shut up. As much as you hate anything paternal, Robert represents everything about a man that you want to be, and so of course you’re going to listen when he tells you to do something. “I’m glad you came to me with this.”

“You what.” You don’t believe a load of that horseshit for a second.

“I have access to several resources that might help. Obviously I would recommend a psychiatrist, not just for Dave but for yourself as well. Perhaps family counseling might also be in order.”

“No.” Not just to the family counseling—you’re not going home to see that bastard ever again—but to any of it. “Nope. Not doin’ it. Can’t afford it.”

“Yes, you can,” Robert urges. His eyes seem alight with cold fire. Is he as righteously outraged as you are by this? “We have a counselor on staff who can point you in the right direction. I believe there may be a woman who recently moved here looking to do her doctoral work on these cases—she has been looking for an opportunity, and you are looking for help, are you not?”

This smells an awful lot like charity. You’re not about to accept anything of the sort—and then, with a shoot of pain up your spine as you shift in your seat, you remember that you literally whore yourself out just to have enough for the bare essentials. “Fine,” you snap.

“Don’t think of it as charity,” Robert urges. Fuck you, you want to scream in his face. “Think of it as two individuals coming together who can help one another.”

“Yeah, and meanwhile you’re calling up the cops and getting me arrested and getting Dave thrown in foster care—fuck, that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen, fuck, fuck,” you mumble into your hands before you run them up to tug at your hair. No wonder it’s standing on end constantly.

“Derick, you are the best person for Dave right now. You’re showing remarkable integrity and strength of personal character.” Wait, really? You stop pitying yourself for half a second and actually fucking listen for once. “Personally, I think it would be best for Dave to stay with you. You’ve already shown me that you’re willing to be there for him. And based on the way he talks about you, he loves you. Very much.”

“He does?”

“Of course,” Egbert says, as if that’s the only natural conclusion.

“Then he won’t hate me for ratting him out.”

“You’re not ratting him out,” Robert reassures you. “You’re getting him the help he needs.”

“I can’t deal with this,” you say quietly. “I can’t fucking do this.”

“Which is why I’m also recommending counseling for you.”

You snort. You’re not that fucked up. “Enough for me if Dave gets what he needs.”

The mahogany clock on the wall counts time. Eventually, Robert sighs. You’ve reached a concession. “I’ll call Roxy. In the meantime, here. This is a handout I usually give to our low-income families.”

The way he keeps saying ‘family’ in reference to you and Dave makes something warm and fiercely protective spike up in your chest. Maybe this guy gets it after all. But then he hands the paper over to you, and you see that it’s a handout of—well, handouts. Idiotic acronyms, like TANF and LIS and SNAP and CHIP and GCCSA and NIIN, stare up at you and remind you that you’re a failure. “Not more fuckin’ charity,” you grumble.

“Just something to keep in mind.” Whoa, did you actually put Egbert on the defensive? “Now. I apologize, but I have a meeting in approximately…” He flicks his shirtsleeve up, showcasing not just a casual (casual!) pair of cufflinks but a fuckin’ chrome-plated executive-level watch. “Ten minutes ago.”

“Aw, shit.” You took up too much of his time. Worthless, Strider.

“Don’t apologize. I’m only too glad to set aside my monthly meeting with the Concerned Children for Censorship Committee in order to help someone who needs it.” And, y’know, the way he says it, you might actually believe him. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Broderick Strider.”

Whoa, a little full-name action here. “Same, Robert Egbert.” That absolutely does not flow off the tongue at all, what a fuckin’ rich-ass name.

Of course, this leaves you with the problem of what else to fill your day with. Dazed, you make your way out of the building and into the Houston son—still roasting hot, even in November. You can’t afford to piddle away the gas, so you get home right away, no roaming around the city, but that only means you end up pacing in your apartment, over and over and over, wearing tracks in the already-ratty carpet, already-dull linoleum. Sure, you might’ve left high school, but you still got fuckin’ homework to do and shit.

Well, nothing better to do than get something done. One by one, you look up the URLs for these government subsidies and community programs. Time to pose like an adult, ‘cause shit just got real.


	4. Chapter 4

Day one. Missed call.

At least you have a phone to call. This Nokia is indestructible, and while it may not be suave, it’ll get you through. And it was free, too—work pays for it, because they want to keep tabs on you at all hours, call you in even when it’s ridiculously fuck-ass early or way too goddamn late. (You try to be quiet when you come and go. Don’t wanna wake the baby.)

Still, this isn’t one of the numbers in your contacts. When you call back on your lunch break, you don’t exactly know what to expect, but the last thing on your mind was that annoying girl from yesterday. “This is Jane Crocker, administrative assistant to Principal Egbert—“

“Wait, this is school, right? Let me guess,” you groan out, palming your forehead. “I gotta report in so CPS can bust my ass.”

“Have to.”

“What?”

“I have to report in,” she corrects you.

Grammar pedants. For fuck’s sake. “Listen,” you growl out, wisely leaving out the ‘you little bitch’ implied in your tone, “just tell me why you called.”

“I wanted to follow up about your visit yesterday.”

“Did Robert put you up to this?” You rub at your temples with thumb and middle finger.

“Actually, no,” she says, and her voice sounds a little more unsure this time. “I’m supposed to follow up on all of his visits, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

You let out a little frustrated noise and sit with a whump before you realize that moving that abruptly into contact with something that solid was a really bad idea. “I don’t need any fuckin’ concern trolling.”

“I’m not--!” She seems just as exasperated as you are. “My call went through to your voicemail at first, but the way your auto-responder plays back that message left me concerned. I was going to drop it, but then you called back. I’m glad,” she admits. “This job gets kind of boring.”

“Be thankful for boring,” you tell her. “You got it made. Cushy desk job, tender young thing like you—a match made in heaven. You’re only, what, twelve?”

“Uncle Robert seems to think so.” On the other end of the phone, you hear the creak of her office chair, the snap of her gum.

Wait. “Uncle—he’s your uncle?”

“Yes.” Sounds like it hurt her to admit it. “I told him I didn’t want to go to college, so he said he could get me a job. What he really did was put me under house arrest.”

You don’t like the way Little Miss Crocker is talking to you about these kinds of things. Makes you feel kinda responsible for her, maybe wanna get her out of that situation. “He ain’t done nothin’ bad to you, had he?” Wow, Strider. Accent ahoy.

“No,” she drawls out. As if it would be obvious that parents don’t inherently harm their children. You, personally, can’t rely on those assumptions. “I just like to complain. It’s dull, though.”

“So you decided you’d call me instead. Listen, uh, Miss—“ You’re blanking on her name.

“Jane,” she reminds you.

“Jane. I get that you got the cushiest day job ever. But some of us ain’t got it so lucky.”

“Oh! I didn’t realize this was a bad time,” she apologizes.

“Yeah, no big.” You try to be nice, brush it off. “I just gotta—shower.” Not exactly a lie, but she doesn’t need to know why. “And get back to work.”

“I’ll call again tomorrow, then.” And before you can interrupt her to tell her that her intrusion in your life is really, really unnecessary, she chirps out a quick “Bye!” and hangs up.

It only strikes you once you get home from work that she might have been trying to make friends with you.

Day two. Missed call.

You don’t recognize the number again. You programmed Jane’s in yesterday, but this one’s different. Your agent? He tends to get prepaid cell phones, then dump them whenever a creditor finds out how to contact him. Sleazebag. Still, you know exactly why he’s calling you. Once the phone stops ringing and the other line picks up, you start right into what you need to tell him. “Listen, buddy, I ain’t gettin’ paired up with Jorge again, you saw what that guy did to me last time and I need at least a month—forget it, a month and a half—before I—“

“Derick? Broderick Strider?” the voice on the other end interrupts you. “This is Robert Egbert. Your son’s principal,” he reminds you.

Something knots in your bowels. “Ohhhhhh shit,” you breathe out. What the hell were you just complaining about? You can’t take the words back, you just have to hope that they’re not as self-incriminating as they sounded to your own ears. “Hi. I, uh. I didn’t know it was you,” you finish lamely.

“I apologize,” he says smoothly. That deep voice is so soothing, you wonder that he doesn’t just pay his way making self-hypnosis tapes. “I should have left a better voicemail.”

“I never check them,” you fib. What really happens is you check them too late. Kinda funny, to listen to other people have a conversation with someone who they think is there, but really isn’t. “Anyway. Whaddayawant.”

“I have some good news,” he says.

The pause means he’s waiting for a response. “Well?”

“I got in contact with Roxy last night. I’ve made arrangements for you and Dave to meet with Ms. Lalonde on Friday.”

The names mean nothing to you, but it jogs your memory a little. “Wait, wasn’t that the fuckin’ psych shit I told you I didn’t need?”

“It’s not for you,” and you swear you can actually hear Robert facepalming on the other end of the line. “This is for Dave. Of course, it would be good for you to get to know her as well, so I would like you to take him yourself to this first appointment.”

You laugh to yourself a little, though the sound isn’t entirely mirthful. “You thought I was gonna let Dave high-tail it to some weird-ass neighborhood all on his lonesome?”

“If you work in the evenings, it might create a schedule conflict.”

“Nope,” you reassure him. “Nothin’ to worry about over here. Wait, when did you schedule this goddamn thing?”

“Eight PM.”

“You sure that ain’t a lil’ late?”

“If Dave is nothing else, he is resilient.” You’ll give him that. “Now. Let me give you the address.”

“Wait. Paper.” Forget it. “Pen. Here. Uh. Shoot.”

Robert tells you some weird apartment complex you’ve never heard of in a part of town known for its swank. There’s apparently a doorman you have to pass, and a few passcodes. Meanwhile, your own apartment barely has a functioning lock on the front door, but you don’t have to tell this guy that. It’s already rubbing sand in your asshole to think about dragging Dave into a place full of luxury, then taking him home to your dump. Robert doesn’t sound worried about it, though. “I’ll tell Ms. Lalonde you’ll be able to make it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you grumble. In the corner of your eye, your director is waving at you to get back on set and stop chatting already. “Listen, I gotta go, but, uh. Tell Jane not to call today.”

“Jane called you?”

“You didn’t know?” What kinda family is it when they’re not up in each other’s shit constantly? “Whatever. Just. Not necessary. I gotta go do—something, just. Bye.”

Awkward.

Day three. Missed call.

And it’s from yet another unknown number! Surprise, surprise. This time, you debate not calling it back, but honestly, so few people know this number that it’s unlikely it’s a prank call or a telemarketer or whatever the fuck. Besides, they didn’t even leave a message. Someone who knows you don’t check them, then.

When you call back, that same annoyingly perky voice greets you. “Hi, Derick!”

Little Miss Crocker sat on her rocker, planning on how to drive you batshit insane. “Oh, so I’m Derick now?”

“I’m a bit of amateur detective,” Jane tells you. You can almost see her smile through the phone. “Is it Broderick? Derick? Mister Strider?”

“Uh.” You’re tempted to say ‘whatever,’ but if she’s gonna keep calling you, you might as well settle on a name. Nobody else but Dave gets to call you Bro, and getting called by your last name leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. The way she says your full name is way too formal for a guy like you, and she’s not even pronouncing Derick right, the word slurring into one syllable in her mouth. May as well get used to it. You live in motherfucking Houston now. “Dirk,” you repeat her pronunciation.

“Dirk. Okay. Well. I was calling because a few of us were going out for three-twos and dancing later tonight, and I—well, we were wondering if you’d like to join us.”

You start laughing before you can really check yourself. “You askin’ me out on a date, Little Miss Crocker?”

“No!” She says it too fast, though, and it comes out as a squeak. “I was just wondering—because you just moved here, and you’re, you know, young…”

“Listen. I’d love to.” Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but you might as well at least make her feel good that you’re rejecting her. “But I kinda—got a kid to look after and shit, y’know?”

“Oh. Oh, that’s right! I forgot about Dave.” Little snoop. She probably saw you on his school records listed as his contact and shit. Or maybe she just listened in on your entire—oh god what if she did listen in on that entire fucking conversation. Your stomach knots a little. “Um. You could get a babysitter?”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” You budgeted out the rest of the week so you can just barely manage to feed the two mouths you’re taking care of. You can’t afford to just go out and get a babysitter and shoot the shit with a girl you hardly know and some of her friends. “You can’t even drink. You’re twelve.”

She giggles. At least she got your joke. “Nineteen,” she corrects you. Same age as you. Shit. She’s too young to be stuck in that job she’s working.  “Well, um. Let me know if you change your mind, I guess?”

“Wait.” She can’t hang up just yet. “Before you go, I gotta ask.”

“Yes?”

Actually, there’s about a million and two questions you could ask her about herself, her uncle, her past, her prospects, her interests. But this isn’t about any of that. “Who’s Roxy?”

“Roxy?” She sounds shocked that you know the name. “She’s a good friend, actually. Why? How do you know her?”

“Her name got brought up while I was being sassed at by Mister Principal Man.”

Jane makes a little frustrated noise on the other end. “Don’t tell me he called her.”

“That’s what he said he was gonna do.”

“I swear I am going to kill her.” She doesn’t sound serious, though. “You know, if you’re that interested, you could always swing by and meet up with us tonight—she’s going to be there, too.”

You’d really rather not. “I think I’m meeting up with her tomorrow, actually.” At least, that was the impression you got from Robert. Are you and Jane talking about the same person?

“You can’t be serious.” She grumbles something incoherent again. “Is he playing matchmaker?”

“No.” At least, you very sincerely hope that’s not what’s happening here. “Just—no.” You don’t want to go into details with this girl you barely know.

“You’ll probably like her, though.” Yeah. Probably not talking about the same person. “Say hi to her from me when you see her, okay?”

“Will do.” The tone comes out bored as shit. You hang up before Jane can chirp at you some more.

You almost feel bad for having to turn her down. It would be nice to have some friends in this hellhole.

Day four. Missed call.

It’s already Friday. The week slips by kinda fast when you’re not taking time out to take a breath and really appreciate it. You’ve been balls-deep, literally, in work, and when you haven’t been working, you’ve been surrounding Dave with as much love and kindness as you have to give. Mostly, it means micro-managing him a little bit to make sure his homework gets done and that he’s eating and sleeping. You’ve been so much more worried about him now than ever before. (Maybe it’s too late to worry.)

(Maybe you were too late.)

You shove your own personal thoughts to the side. You don’t have a ‘you’ any more. You are your fake name at work. You are Bro to your adorable taintstain of a lil’ bro. You’re Derick to the man helping to lift you out of purgatory and redeem yourself. You’re Dirk to his niece, the one who wants to be your friend despite your abrasive attitude.

And, for some reason, you’re Mister Strider in this latest voicemail.

It’s from some chick named Rita. You don’t recognize the name at all. Fake name? Some porn star you owe a favor to? Wrong number? “I’m looking forward to meeting you tonight.” What the hell?

You don’t call this one back. You’ve been having too many weird phone calls lately. Instead, you do your eight-to-five, pick Dave up from his latchkey and sneak in a five-minute conversation with Robert while you wait for Dave to put everything in his backpack. Make your usual baloney-and-cheese sandwiches for dinner. (No mayo. Can’t afford it.) Play a few stupid two-player racing games against Dave while you wait for the clock to tick down.

One hour left and he’s clinging onto your shirtsleeve as you wait for the bus. You’re wearing your favorite sweatshirt, orange with a UT longhorn on the front, faded after so many years in the wash and so many previous owners before you found it at Goodwill. At one point you reached down and tried to hold his hand, but he shied away from that contact, too. Too soon. You should have known.

Forty-five minutes left and you’re jittery as fuck. The baseball cap comes off, settles back onto your head, off again, and every single time it fluffs your hair before you flatten it back down. You’re going to make yourself bald before you hit 30. Dave doesn’t seem to care, too engrossed in his game of Breakout to notice how fidgety you are. It’s not like he can hurt your phone while he plays it—that goddamn thing could survive the apocalypse—and it shows him that you trust him.

Thirty minutes left and you’re silently praying for your life to be over. You really, really do not want to face this woman. It’s not that you don’t trust psychologists, it’s that you don’t fucking trust psychologists. Ever. At all. Yeah, it’ll be good for Dave, blah blah blah, but he’s just a kid. You don’t want someone else coming into his brain and fucking him up even worse than he was before. Plus, this bus will not fucking move, jammed in place with inner-city traffic. You hate public transportation.

Fifteen minutes left and you’re starting to regret saying anything. This is a really fucking nice neighborhood. You don’t want Dave to go back home and realize how shitty he has it, after being exposed to this. The doorman’s nice enough, but you have to snatch Dave away from him before he leans down to tousle your brother’s hair. (Well-meaning, but the kid’s got a touching issue, and you don’t want to set him off before something so delicate.)

Ten minutes left and you’re staring at your watch while the elevator slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y climbs the forty-one floors to the Lalonde apartment. You’re getting weird looks while people filter on and off. Yes, you obviously don’t belong here. You hope your hostile stare tells them enough so they won’t ask questions. Or maybe they’re used to charity cases clogging their building.

Five minutes left and you’re trying hard not to pace and failing miserably. Dave, meanwhile, has stayed completely engrossed in his cell phone. You wish you could shield him from the pitying looks the two of you are getting from well-dressed complete strangers. At least you have your hat. He doesn’t have anything. Still, you have a little time to kill, and you’re nothing if not punctual.

It’s time.

Here goes nothing.

You knock on the door to 413, and immediately you have to swallow down a solid ball of fear that’s crept up into your throat. What do you fucking say to whoever answers? You don’t hear anything from inside the apartment, and for a sickening moment, you’re afraid you’ve stopped by the wrong place. That you don’t belong. That she doesn’t want you here.

Then a woman answers the door. She’s dressed all in black and white, snobby as fuck, but it goes well with her look. Close-cropped blonde hair shellacked in place, too much eye makeup—are her eyes seriously purple? Elizabeth Taylor all up in this bitch. “Um.” Eloquent, Strider. “Roxy? Roxy Lalonde?”

“Oh, are you here to see my daughter?”

The voice sounds familiar. “Wait, what the hell’s going on here.” Daughter? Who are you talking to now, then? “Robert—Robert Egbert, he set up a meeting for us tonight—“

“Ah, Mister Strider!” Yes, that’s where you know the voice from. “I’m Rita.” Ahhh, and everything falls into place. “A pleasure to meet you. And Dave, hello!” Dave doesn’t even look up. Surly little kid. “Why don’t you come in and make yourself at home. I’ll be with you in a few moments—I like to make tea in the evenings, and I’m sure Dave might like some as well.”

Dave’s clammed up. His little-kid fist is clenched in the sleeve of your sweatshirt, and he’s unwilling to let go. “C’mon,” you mutter down at him. “It’s okay. Go on in, I’ll be here too.”

His wide red eyes look up at you, trying to see if this is a trick. When you gently urge him towards the door again, and when Ms. Lalonde holds it a little further open, he sidles on in. Mother of God and all she holds dear, this place is rich. There’s collectible wizard statuettes on every available surface. The living room furniture is arranged like the place is a museum. In one corner of the room is a little girl with hair almost as white as Dave’s, close-cropped around her chin; it swings in her face as she reads her book, and she tucks it behind her headband every time she turns a page. That is one thick-ass book, for a girl who doesn’t look any older than your own kid. “Make yourself at home,” Ms. Lalonde calls.

Right. Easier said than done. Well, for you, at least. Dave doesn’t seem to have a problem with plopping down on a large chair next to the girl, and he tries to peer over the cover of the book to see what she’s reading. Once he sets down your phone, you take your opportunity to reclaim it. “What’cha readin’?”

“The Necronomicon for Young Readers: A Child’s Grimoire.” She looks up briefly—she has the same violet eyes as the woman who answered the door—but only so she can assess Dave. Once she finds him satisfactory, she sniffs to herself and turns her attention back to her book. “I’m Rose.”

“Dave.” He never stops looking over her shoulder. “What’s that?” When he goes to point at what he means, he leans across the arm of his chair to put his grubby finger on the page.

“Avert your eyes.” Her voice is hushed, as if someone could overhear the two of them. “That is the Old One Yog-Sothoth.”

“It’s just a buncha circles ‘n’ lines.”

“Because his nature is unknowable by the mere mortal.” Her eyes are wide as she explains her mythos to Dave.

Fucking adorable. No, really. You’re smiling, because hey, wouldja lookit that, Dave’s making a friend. You’ll keep bringing him here just for that. Oh, but Ms. Lalonde has to come interrupt the precious chilluns as they’re having a Moment. “Dave, Rose, would you come with me, please?” She’s carrying a tray with a tea set on it. Pretentious fuck. “Mister Strider—“

“Don’t call me that,” you mutter.

She talks right over you. “You are welcome to leave, as long as you return at the end of the hour.”

“I think I’ll stay, thanks.” As long as she’s opening her home to you, you might as well take advantage of it. But when Rose and Dave shimmy out of their seats to trot along behind Ms. Lalonde, that little girl takes whatever reading material was in the room with her. Well, anything worth reading. The living room is more like a waiting room—only appropriate, if she really does run her business out of her apartment—and all you can see are backissues of Parenting magazine. Eugh.

Still, you have nothing better to do, and these don’t look like they’ve been sneezed in, so you may as well pick one up. You’re not actually reading it, more trying to listen in on whatever Dave’s talking about, but the walls of this place must be nice and thick, because you can’t hear a goddamn thing. What’s so important that he can tell a stranger, but not you? You hate the whole concept of this.

Of course, you have to be interrupted in your agitation. A third chick in this apartment drags her ass out from the hallway leading to the rest of the place, lugging a tote bag that looks to be heavy. She totally ignores you as she plunks down in the middle of the living room, shoving the coffee table aside so she can pull her things out of her bag and spread them across the floor. Computer parts, old monitors, an ancient-looking laptop, a desktop modem… “The hell?”

You didn’t realize you actually said it out loud until this girl turns to look at you. She looks like she’s about your age, only a lot more immature. For her, the ‘80s don’t seem to have ended, because she’s wearing a garish sweater, pink cats in a repeating pattern, long and baggy over a pair of leggings and matching pink leg warmers. (Or is she doing the pastel grunge thing? You can appreciate that. You’re pretty grunge yourself.) Her lipstick is black, perfectly showing off her sneer when she turns back to look at you with holy shit her eyes are pink. No, like, not like pink-eye pink, but her irises are a lighter shade of purple than Rose’s or Rita’s. And she has Rita’s same blonde hair, curling a little at the ends, although she does that Rose thing where she constantly pushes it back behind a headband. “Like whatcha see?”

Is that an accent, or is she slurring? “I—what?” Not cool. People shouldn’t be able to get you off your guard with such a simple question. Fine. You’ll play. “I see exactly jack shit and a side of fuckall.”

“That’s ‘cause there ain’t nothin’ to it yet.” She picks herself up off the floor, moves into the kitchen. You try not to follow her with your eyes, but you can’t seem to help it. Still, she disappears behind a wall, and all you can do is trace her little noises. Pour. Pour again. Snap of a cap, shakeshakeshake, pour a third time. When she’s in your line of sight again, she’s holding a martini glass; she puts it to her lips and barely suppresses a shudder when she sips on her drink.

Alcoholic, then. “What the hell are you even drinking?”

“I can drink if I want to.” Another sip, and you can see the black print of her lipstick already on the rim of the glass. “Sooooooooooo…” Slurring, then. “Whatcha doin’ here?”

Same as anybody else barging into a stranger’s apartment. “There was kind of a problem.” Stupidest way to put it, but also vaguest. “I kinda… I think I was too late. I fucked up.”

“You ‘n’ me both.” She offers her hand to shake before she sits. “Roxy.”

“Uh. Dirk, I guess.” Probably how Jane was talking to her about you.

“Oh, that one!” She starts rummaging around in her computer parts, eventually coming into contact with a screwdriver. “You’re a cutie, no wonder Jane’s got it bad.” She makes a motion with the screwdriver in her hand that is entirely too lewd for civilized conversation.

The last thing you wanted to do with Jane was encourage some kind of damn fool crush on the only person likely to have been at all sympathetic towards her. “Uh, what?”

“Thinks you’re gonna gallop her home like Prince Charming back to Swoon Kingdom and the land of the constant blush.”

“I ain’t no prince charming.”

“Coulda fooled me.” She jerks her head back to the rest of the apartment before dragging a hard drive into her lap and piking around in it. “That one yours?”

“Um.” You swallow heavily. Well, if you’re gonna be here once a week for the next forever, there’s a good chance you’re gonna see this girl again, and you’d rather not tell her unless you have to. “Kinda.”

“Sometimes,” and you wonder how drunk she really is if she’s just making polite conversation with a stranger over a martini and a motherboard, “I really wonder, y’know? What it would be like to have kids.”

Dave’s not even biologically your offspring, but because the two of you’s sperm and egg donors royally fucked up in the parenting arena, the burden’s on you now. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” The computer parts just keep getting smaller and smaller. If she keeps going, she’s gonna split the fucking atom. “And I mean, like. The kid. Not the having kids. What the kid would be like.”

“A freak of nature brought up by someone who’s clearly got no business bringin’ up anybody.” Not like you were thinking about your own situation. Nope. Not at all.

Roxy whistles low through her teeth. “Shuuuuuucks, buster. Give you one little hypothetical and you go sucking the fun out of shit.”

“What, like some turd-hungry Dracula?”

She laughs. Okay, so you might be connecting with her a little. She seems to be on your same weird wavelength. She’s kinda cute when she concentrates, but really, she’s just a stranger to you, and you don’t want to get to know her any better. Looks like you don’t have a choice at the moment, though. “Seriously, though,” she says at the tail end of her tipsy giggle, “I mean. It’s not all bad, right?”

You scoff a little. That magazine is firmly by the wayside now; you recline on your couch, lace your hands behind your head as you cross your ankles. “I dunno. You tell me.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” It’s an echo, but she sounds serious about it. While she talks, she gathers together parts you don’t have names for and starts cobbling them together with miniscule screws. “I mean, Mom. Look at her. Can’t let it go, has to babysit me even now.”

“Maybe it’s because you drink,” you suggest, trying to tease.

It obviously doesn’t come across that way. “Maybe it’s because she’s a micromanaging sociopath who won’t accept the fact that I didn’t get straight As my first year in college.” She downs half her martini after she spits out that vitriol.

“Whoa, latent hostility ahoy!” From where you’re sitting, you can nudge your foot against her knee, try to connect with her and get her to calm down a little. “Just teasin’ you.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not funny, okay?”

“Dude.” Everyone is ‘dude’ to you, even this chick. “I’m the one who brought a six-year-old kid to a psych. Don’t even start on me with ‘not funny’.”

“At least you’re, y’know. Out there. Doin’ it. On your own.” She sighs, takes a drink. This swallow goes down a little easier. Strangely, she seems to steady out as more alcohol gets into her system. “I tried. Houston’s a fuckin’ long way from Lake Ontario, lemme tell you. And she still—followed me. Can’t let it go. Brought Rose with her, too.”

“Wait, lemme get this straight.” Doesn’t help that you got weird half-truths from Robert and Jane. “Rita’s your mom, and Rose is your little sister?”

“More like Rita’s my babysitter and Rose is mine, not hers.” Another drink. She seems to do it whenever she gets particularly agitated. Self-medicating, then. “She’s not even here most of the time. I had to schedule my classes so I could be here when Rose gets out of school.”

“And you still have someone else cooking you dinner and making sure your apartment’s clean and paying your rent and keeping a roof over your head.” She can cry you a river of rich white girl tears.

“You don’t--!” She hides a noise of irritation when she swallows down the rest of her martini, tipping the glass back towards the ceiling so she can get every last drop. Through her shiver, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “I don’t think you get it.”

“Trust me. I get it.” Oh, do you get it. “I just don’t wanna play fuckin’ Oppression Olympics with you.”

“But you know how it feels, right?” Her voice is a lot smaller now. She won’t meet your eyes, preferring instead to put her little electronics back together. She broke it, now she’s fixing it.

“Yeah.” Maybe you pushed this a little too far. “I mean, look at me. Friday night, right? Normal nineteen-year-old is out with his frat bros. Me? Dragging my little brother to a psychologist. Picked him up from latchkey after my eight-to-five.”

“Latchkey, huh?” Roxy looks up, waggles her eyebrows at you. “Did you see the infamous Daddy Egbert?”

Oh, fucking hell. Was this what Jane was going on about, when she said she didn’t want her uncle calling this girl? “Daddy Egbert, huh?”

“Oh my God, he is so dreamy, don’t even get me started,” rushes out of her mouth. “So… rugged, and manly—did you know he smokes a pipe? And his suits…”

That gets a slight chuckle out of you. “Are you seriously hot for your friend’s uncle?”

“Oh, excuuuuuuuse me.” She has to be drunk, because of the way she’s smiling up at you with half-lidded eyes. “I can’t hit on anybody, and apparently I can entertain nary a frisky _thought_ about anybody, ‘cause errybody’s off-limits.” Or maybe she’s just trying to hit on you.

“Roxy.” Okay, you might be full-on laughing by now. “Roxy, you are drunk.”

“Correction.” She waves her glass at you. “Drinking.” Then she seems to realize it’s empty. “Okay, fine, drunk. Whatever. What do you even do, mister I-won’t-go-out-on-a-Thursday-night?”

“More like what _don’t_ I do.” You huff out a little amused snort. She doesn’t have to know the gritty details. “Not proud, but it pays the bills.”

“What, are you, like, a porn star or something?”

“Yes. I am totally a porn star.” If you’re sarcastic enough, maybe she’ll miss out on the part where you’re telling the truth. “I’m nineteen and I’m Catholic and I am totally, absolutely, the filthiest, raunchiest porn star you will ever meet.”

“Okay, fine, don’t tell me.” She’s smiling, though, and her knee nudges back against your foot in reassurance. This conversation has constantly skirted the edge of what is and isn’t amusing to the two of you. Seems like you have the same sensitive areas, the same places where it’s not okay to tear the sutures and re-open the wound. Kinda giving you mood whiplash, to be honest, but then again, you’ve never really met anyone who really gets it like this.

Of course, right when you and Roxy have this meeting of the minds thing going on, Dave and Rose run out from the back of the apartment. Dave doesn’t have any tear tracks on his face—good news. And Rose doesn’t look too much the worse for wear, either. Rita follows close behind, an enigmatic smile on her face. “An excellent start,” she tells you warmly. Does she really mean that, or is it only for show?

“Great,” you mumble. Dave climbs up next to you on the couch, close but not too close. “How much do I owe you?”

“Ah, about that.” Rita reaches up to tug on a lock of hair, curl it around her finger. Is that why her hair has that permanent curl to it at the ends? “Consider this pro bono, would you?”

“What, are you gonna write Dave into your doctoral thesis?” Everything costs something.

“I would rather not.” At least she’s being frank with you. “It’s more like… a favor. For an old friend.”

Oh, great. Now Robert’s pulling strings for you. Yet another person to be enslaved to, you guess. “Thanks for the start,” you tell her.

“The start?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, we come for the one night, and then you tell us where to go from here.”

The way she smiles down at you makes you feel pity from her, not empathy. “Derick, I intend to see Dave again next week. Perhaps more than once a week, if the two of you don’t mind.”

Wait, what? “You mean, this is gonna be, like. A thing?”

Rita glances down over her shoulder. When you follow her gaze, you can see Rose and Dave huddled over Rose’s book again, Rose reading to him in hushed tones. The way they act, it’s like they’re siblings; you remember Dave acting like that around Bobbi Sue, so it doesn’t really surprise you like it might. “Of course,” Rita tells you. “And I would also like to take you out for drinks.”

When you move your gaze away from the two little ones to Roxy, the other girl has a horrified look on her face, that I-can’t-believe-my-mom-is-hitting-on-you look. “Well, um.”

“Consider it a more informal way of me getting to know Dave’s primary caretaker a little better.” Oh my god did this woman just wink at you. “I doubt you would prefer it if I treated you to a full intake session.”

“Aw hell naw,” you agree. “Drinks. Fine.” You don’t drink, and you don’t intend to start, but you don’t have to tell her that. “When?”

“Next Friday, this time. Will that suit you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Whatever. Looks like the Lalondes have already thoroughly ingratiated themselves into your life by now. “What do I do about Dave?”

“Bring him here. Roxy can watch him and Rose.”

Oh. Oh, now you’re starting to get it. When you glance back at Roxy, her expression has morphed into it-pains-my-bowels-to-listen-to-this-conversation. You try to look and sound apologetic. “Sure.”

“Then it’s settled. Here is my card,” and she hands you a professional-looking one, embossed, on good card stock—so rich she can print her own. “Now, I need to settle some of my first impressions onto paper. Roxy, could you show them to the door?” Weird. Won’t even show you out herself?

Whatever. She goes back the way she came, which gives you a chance to talk to Roxy again. “Are you really gonna be okay with that?”

“No,” she says sullenly. “But, I mean. It’s for your kid. I can babysit him for one friggin’ night. Besides—you could always ask her for that favor in the future. Maybe go out once in a while.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that might be nice.” You stand, and Dave mirrors your action.

“Wait. Before you go.” Roxy reaches up from the floor to grab your wrist and keep you from moving. You don’t like that grip—it triggers immediate visceral reactions on your part, none of which are good, but thank fuck, you’ve trained yourself well enough that it doesn’t show on your face. “Here’s my number.”

She takes out a pen and starts to write on the palm of your hand. It tickles. “For a good time, call?” you joke with her.

“Hey. Maybe you wanna talk to someone your own age. Someone who, y’know. Gets it.”

“Point taken.” Dave yawns next to you, tired and unsteady on his feet; he stumbles and ends up leaning into you. Uncharacteristic, for a kid who isn’t usually this clingy. “Gotta go put this one to bed, though.”

“Don’t I know it.” Roxy, at least, shows you to the door. “See you soon!” is what she leaves you with.

You turn it over in your mind as you program new numbers into your cell phone. Dave drools onto your sleeve while he sleeps through the entire bus ride home. And, of course, the little taintsmear is awake enough to cream you three times at Tetris 2 before he really goes to bed for the night. Doesn’t stop you from hanging out in his room while you sew your puppets to make sure he’s doing okay. And eventually, when you have to go to sleep yourself, you tuck one under his arm—orange, with a tuft of yellow hair, so he won’t have to feel so alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY METRIC FUCKTON OF WORDS BATMAN


End file.
